Peace Activist

Worried about a nuclear war in 1982, 10-year-old Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov, the leader of the Soviet Union. In a personal response to Smith, Andropov reassured her and invited her and her parents to visit. Her trip garnered enormous press coverage, and Smith became known as the “Peace Ambassador.” She died in a plane crash in 1985. I photographed this statue in Augusta, Maine.